All posts tagged Japan Meteorological Agency

Typhoon Phanfone, characterized as extremely strong by the Japan Meteorological Agency, is expected to approach Okinawa and southwestern Japan over the weekend while maintaining its strength. Tokyo and eastern Japan could see heavy rains and wind on Sunday. Read More »

Japan residents opened their umbrellas Friday in preparation for a wet weekend as two more typhoons approached the island nation.

Together Typhoon Francisco and Typhoon Lekima bring the count to impact Japan this year to 19, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. Though Lekima is not expected to hit mainland Japan, Francisco was already drawing near on Friday evening.

Residents Tokyo went about the workday in only a slight drizzle. Yet several towns in western Japan, including Takamori in Kumamoto prefecture and Hirose in Yamaguchi prefecture, had received the most rain in a 24-hour period ever for the month of October as of about 0600 GMT. (LINK 1) Local media were also reporting at least one death in relation to Francisco as it moved up the coast on Friday evening. Read More »

At four minutes to 5 p.m. Thursday, much of Japan stopped suddenly. Cell phones buzzed with an alert from the Japan Meteorological Agency: a massive earthquake with a force reminiscent of the devastating March 11, 2011, temblor was about to hit the ancient prefectural capital of Nara.

TBS

Trains stopped in Tokyo. The dollar noticeably dipped instantly 20 points against the yen (which oddly remains a safe haven in times of disaster, even when the disaster hits Japan). In a basement office at the civil engineering department of Tokyo University, an alarm blared through the PA system, followed by a female voice on a recording warning of a strong earthquake. “You have 30 seconds,” the voice intoned. “Brace yourself.” In downtown Nara, the epicenter-in-waiting, the staff at a public welfare office opened windows and doors to secure an escape route. The fire department hurried engines onto the street, poised to rush to the worst-hit neighborhoods.

Women in rain-soaked summer kimono, or yukata, with drooping flower hairpieces were a common sight Saturday evening in Tokyo as a torrential downpour and flashes of lightning unexpectedly cut short Japan’s oldest and most famous fireworks display, the Sumida River Fireworks Festival.

But the capital’s sudden bout of inclement weather was a mere sprinkle compared with the onslaught that swept Yamaguchi and Shimane prefectures in the western part of the country the following day. A 79-year old woman died in a mudslide and two men aged 84 and 60 went missing in what the metrological agency called “an unprecedented amount of rainfall.” Read More »

Things are heating up in Kyotanabe, a little-known town of about 63,500 people situated in the gut of Japan’s central Kansai region, not far from Osaka and Kyoto.

AFP/Getty Images

Long, hot summer: Temperatures have hit record levels in Japan this year.

Temperatures bubbled to 39.9 degrees Celsius (103.8 degrees Fahrenheit) in Kyotanabe on Sunday, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency, giving the town, previously perhaps best known for its tea growing, the undesirable honor of being the hottest locale in Japan in a summer already logged as the hottest on record in over a century.

But Kyotanabe may soon go back to being just another sizzling place in Japan because of a few fistfuls of tall grass. The temperature’s record-breaking status was thrown into doubt after it was discovered that the heat sensory equipment used by the JMA to measure temperature was surrounded by overgrown grass, according to local daily Kyoto Newspaper (in Japanese). Read More »

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Japan Real Time is a newsy, concise guide to what works, what doesn’t and why in the one-time poster child for Asian development, as it struggles to keep pace with faster-growing neighbors while competing with Europe for Michelin-rated restaurants. Drawing on the expertise of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires, the site provides an inside track on business, politics and lifestyle in Japan as it comes to terms with being overtaken by China as the world’s second-biggest economy. You can contact the editors at japanrealtime@wsj.com